The popular California Shohin Bonsai Seminar was held on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, January 31-February 3, 2014. The event was held at a small hotel in Santa Nella, California, which is a small town (truck stop?) located between Los Angeles and San Francisco to make travel easy for people throughout the state. Several friends from Rochester traveled with me to the event on our way to Japan for the Kikuyu Bonsai Exhibition, Shinseki of Japan Exhibition and to visit public and private bonsai collections in the Tokyo area.

The excellent and well presented lecture/demonstrations were held on Friday. On Saturday morning 12 workshops were conducted by skilled instructors, all in one large banquet room. Although all the workshops were in the same room, everyone enjoyed the individual attention of the teachers and excellent plant material each prepared for their classes. An additional 12 workshops were then presented in the…

So far we discussed a great deal on how to start your trees and your techniques in the right direction. When I was thinking about the path my writing would take, guiding you from complete novice to at the very least “familiar” with bonsai, the next logical step in the progression would be wiring. However, I will not be discussing wiring yet. The first reason is that wiring is one of those hands on things that I really want to do my best to take detailed pictures of and so I think it best to wait until spring time to post on. Second, Wiring is really the last procedure in the process of  the initial styling of your bonsai. I wanted to make it absolutely evident that you have to learn the mechanics of bonsai before you begin to think about the creative aspects. After all, you can’t expect to…

Having started my Bonsai Revival Journey in July 2011 I’m glad to say that it continues today with modest success. It’s true to say that I have learnt more about  the training and developing of bonsai in the last few years than I did in all the earlier years of futtering with trees. The main reasons for this are that I am perhaps more serious about the hobby and have learnt a little about simple tree horticulture through regular tuition and training under the auspices of Northern Ireland Bonsai Society. Another significant source of learning has been the massive and very rewarding  information bank that is the internet.

I have also discovered the obvious. That is the fundamental reality that trees respond to feeding. That may seem to some to be so obvious a statement that it is foolish to make it. By this I mean that trees respond positively…

Flow. In bonsai we need it, and we need it early. We have to decide ‘Right’ or ‘Left’ at the very beginning when crafting our trees, or we could land in a real aesthetic pickle. Flow is the direction the asymmetry of the tree moves, and is essential when it comes to linking the future bonsai to other elements, not just in display, but the interrelationships on your benches or posts, too.

This White Pine had some very long lower branches, and so the first part of this adventure was removing them so that the smaller, more promising upper branches could be used in the new design.